U.S. adds 217K jobs; unemployment holds steady

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 217,000 in May, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.3%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, health care and social assistance, food services and drinking places, and transportation and warehousing.

Household Survey Data

The unemployment rate held at 6.3% in May, following a decline of 0.4 percentage points in April. The number of unemployed persons was unchanged in May at 9.8 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons declined by 1.2 percentage points and 1.9 million, respectively.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (5.9%), adult women (5.7%), teenagers (19.2%), whites (5.4%), blacks (11.5%), and Hispanics (7.7%) showed little or no change in May. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.3% (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.) Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs declined by 218,000 in May. The number of unemployed reentrants increased by 237,000 over the month, partially offsetting a large decrease in April. (Reentrants are persons who previously worked but were not in the labor force prior to beginning their current job search.)